


Long Game

by Adina



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Extremely dodgy Whoniverse "science.", Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 20:56:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9843914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adina/pseuds/Adina
Summary: Ianto had known Torchwood's retirement policy since the first day he started in London: twenty years and a gold watch, or...less...and a little white pill.  And he wanted out.  A first season AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://copperbadge.livejournal.com/profile)[copperbadge](http://copperbadge.livejournal.com/) for looking this over.
> 
> This was originally written in 2009.

"Do you have any idea how much shit I'm going to get from Gwen when she finds out about this?" Jack asked conversationally, thumbs tucked casually, ostentatiously so, into his braces. The pose was lost on Ianto, sitting with his back firmly turned. "Tosh too, though she'll be quieter about it."

The steady tap of Ianto's fingers on the keyboard didn't even stutter. "Do you have any idea how little I care? Sir."

"Why, Ianto, I'm hurt," he drawled, not even trying to put much sincerity into it. If he was honest with himself--something he tried to do as little as possible--he was going to miss this, miss sparring with Ianto.  
  
"I'm sure you'll survive." There was maybe a touch of humor in Ianto's voice. Maybe.

Time to bait the hook, see what kind of fishy he had based on whether it bit. "At least I can tell her that it was your choice."

Ianto's fingers stilled while he looked at the computer screen. Finally he twisted to look up at Jack. "Given that you would say that even if it weren't, I doubt she'll believe you." He turned back to the screen but his typing was much slower than it had been. He stopped again but stayed facing the screen. "I could write--record a message, assure her--tell them the truth." He paused. "I don't want her to get someone killed while worrying about me."

And that was what he was looking for. "A suicide note, then?" he drawled, hiding his satisfaction.

Ianto gave the nearest thing Jack had heard to a laugh from him since before they discovered the cyber-conversion unit in the basement--possibly the first sincere laugh he'd ever heard from Ianto, he realized. "My mother always did say that you owed a note to those you left behind, if only to keep them from being prosecuted for your murder."

That much hadn't been expunged from Ianto's records. "Cheerful maternal advice," he said with a chuckle, as if he hadn't read those same records, as if he hadn't spent the night reconstructing Ianto's mutilated personnel records in exquisite detail. Ianto's mother hadn't left a note when she actually managed it, but given her history his father hadn't been subject to more than cursory investigation.

Ianto's voice was flat, emotionless. "A ball of laughs, Mum."

"So you'll leave a note so I don't get accused of your...metaphorical...murder?" He grinned at Ianto. "Now I'm touched."

"Yes, sir, you are." Ianto closed out of the NHS database and logged into the MOT database.

Ianto was good at that, really good, beyond good actually, making up a past and a future for himself that would stand up to scrutiny both from within and without. "I think you've been holding out on us, Ianto," Jack said, letting some of the real betrayal he felt show in his voice. "You let us waste you in housekeeping and filing when you could have been doing so much more."

Ianto twisted to look at him again. "You hired me to clean up your shit, _sir_ , nothing more," he nearly spit the words. "What should I have done, come to you and said, Oh, by the way, I'm a fully trained researcher and I can do this crap in my sleep?"

Jack matched him glare for glare. "Torchwood Three doesn't survive--Cardiff doesn't survive!--on my people just doing their jobs, nothing more." The waste, the fucking waste. "If that's your attitude," he said more calmly, "then we're better off without you."

From Ianto's wince that stung, as Jack meant it to, but he was never one to give in without a fight. "Then we're both best served," he said, turning away again.

Jack watched in silence as Ianto created the gruesome motor accident that killed Lisa Hallett and left her fiancé, one Ianto Jones, battered and amnesic. His hands were steady as he wrote out the destruction of his life, only biting his lower lip as he photoshopped Lisa's corpse, stripped of its cyber components, into the accident-scene pictures. "You don't have to do this," Jack said on sudden impulse.

"I've known Torchwood's retirement policy since the first day I started in London: twenty years and a gold watch, or...less...and a little white pill," Ianto said. "And I want out." He gave a little snort, "Or do you mean I should leave my life to your ham-fisted attempts at building a cover story?"

Ianto was trying to make him angry. It was amusing, really, except that it showed just how much Jack--and Torchwood--had lost out on in the months of his deception, as he put his intelligence, his fire, into saving a dead woman and unwittingly advancing her murderers' cause. This was the real Ianto, without the subservience and fear, because what did he have to lose anymore?

Jack could offer Ianto retirement without Retcon; it wasn't like it would make any difference, and it might, just might, change things for Ianto if he knew that Jack had never removed more than a day or two of anyone's memory. His own anger at losing two years was too strong for him to do that to anyone else. He watched the tightness of Ianto's shoulders, tasted the anger in the air. No, Ianto needed this, needed a fresh start. Or at least the illusion of one.

***

_Gwen, Tosh, Owen._

_By the time you see this I won't remember you. You aren't the part of the last few months that I most want to forget, but you're part of Torchwood, and I plan to forget that I ever heard of Torchwood or aliens. Yes, Gwen, this was my idea and my choice; don't go blaming Jack for something that is not, for once, his fault._

***

Ianto stretched, feeling his back pop as it aligned, and opened his laptop on the cheap outdoor table. It felt strange to sit in what passed for sun in Cardiff, above ground and in the middle of the day, sipping coffee he hadn't made; strange but good. He had found the café on the day after he got out of the hospital and adopted it as his office away from home, but mostly he only surfed and read the news. He didn't need to look for work immediately: according to his records, Ianto Jones had worked for a London IT firm during the two missing years of his life and had netted a tidy sum when the firm went public, enough to live on for a couple of years or to start his own company with. If he didn't remember the firm or the work, well, it wasn't like he had any friends or family left in Cardiff to ask him about it.

He needed the time. He'd done sod all for a month and the coiled knots in his gut were dissolving, and he was even sleeping through the night two or three times a week. It was probably time to start thinking about doing...something. Moving on with his life, figuring out what he wanted to do with the rest of it.

A man walking up the street caught his eye, the swing of his long coat incongruous on a mild September afternoon. Ianto's first reflex was to sink into his chair, sink under his table to avoid being noticed. His second was to glare at the man until he went away. Neither was appropriate for a stranger, a man he didn't recognize or remember. Instead he managed to keep his face straight, neutral, even as the man noticed him and walked up to his table.

"Ianto...Jones, isn't it?" the man asked with a lazy smile that he'd probably been told was charming. "We met a year, year and a half ago, at that conference in London?"

Ianto swore silently. "I'm afraid I don't remember--"

The man smiled again. "And here I thought I was unforgettable." He held out a hand and Ianto perforce took it. "Jack Harkness. Captain Jack Harkness."

He had no reason to hate a man he didn't remember, no reason even to distrust him. "My memory's not what it was," he admitted with a self-deprecating shrug.

"Ah, well," Jack gave a matching shrug and a small pout. "Mind if I join you?" he asked even as he was seating himself. Ianto was tempted to object, but the waitress was already hurrying over. Jack ordered with another of those oh-so-charming smiles for the waitress. "So what brings you back to Cardiff?" he asked after she was gone. "I thought I remembered you were a Londoner, all those lovely Welsh vowels wasted so far from home."

What the hell was Jack playing at? Ianto knew that Torchwood was monitoring him, tracking his every move, but this--this was stupid, risking destroying the very thing it was testing. Even someone with a normal reaction to Retcon might have started remembering by now. "Surely that's my business, Mr.--Harker?" There. Let Jack see just how forgettable he was.

"Harkness," Jack corrected. "But you can call me Jack," he added with a leer and a smirk. "Can't blame a guy for being curious about a good looking man." He stretched and took a sip of the coffee the waitress brought him, giving a small shrug as he did so. "Besides, it's either ask about you or talk about the weather. Though that freak windstorm over at the Coed y Garreg school makes the weather a bit more interesting than it might be."

"I read about that," Ianto said, nodding towards his laptop. The weird weather had Torchwood's thumbprints all over it, but to have not read about it would have been suspicious. "Lucky no one was hurt."

Jack grimaced at that, so maybe someone had gotten hurt. Ianto found himself hoping it wasn't Toshiko. Or Gwen. Even Owen he'd be sorry to see hurt, at least seriously. "Lucky, yeah."

"So who'd you reckon for the footie?" Ianto asked, curious to see whether Jack would--or could--follow the subject change.

After a short and unconvincing conversation on the relative merits of Arsenal and Manchester, Jack excused himself and left. Ianto looked down at his shaking hands. Maybe it was too soon to think about moving on.

***

It wasn't hard to follow Torchwood in the news the next few months, though Ianto wondered if anyone believed the cover story about cannibals--human cannibals--in the Welsh countryside.

***

Gwen hesitated at the arch leading to the morgue. Jack had insisted on storing Suzie's body away himself, and she wasn't sure he was ready for company. She knew she wasn't ready to see Suzie again, not even in a morgue drawer. But the drawers were closed, Jack leaning back against the wall with one boot up behind him.

"Want something?" he asked, sounding tired. If there was innuendo in his voice she couldn't hear it, for once.

"No." She stopped. " Yes--" She wanted this day to have never happened. She wanted to apologize for falling for Suzie's blandishments. She wanted to yell at him for disregarding Suzie's needs, Gwen's needs, for assuming that the rest of Torchwood could emulate--would want to emulate--Jack's ruthless detachment.

Jack pushed away from the wall with his foot. "Well, that's clear." He put a hand on her shoulder, pushed her around to face the exit. "You should go home."

And do what? Tell Rhys that her deceased coworker tried to steal her life today? _Hi, dear, and how was_ your _day?_ "I was looking into Retcon," she said instead, falling in step with him back to the Hub. "Wondering if it really made that man psychotic."

"That was Suzie's programming," Jack said shortly.

"We don't know that!" she said, ignoring his body language telling her to drop it. She grabbed his arm, pulling him up short. "Suzie did something to him, yes, but from the residue she gave him massive amounts of Retcon too."

"Even if the Retcon affected him, it took massive amounts, as you said," Jack said with exaggerated patience. "I don't think you need to worry about the little dose you got."

Did Jack think she was worried about herself? Did he really think she was that selfish? "Ianto--"

"Ianto is none of your concern!"

"Ianto lost two years of his life," she spat. "I don't even want to think of the dose that took. What if it affected him? What if it hurt him? We need to check on him, make sure he's all right." She kept her chin up defiantly. It was the first time she or anyone else had mentioned Ianto since his video, but she wasn't going to let Jack make her back down, damn it.

Jack glared at her and she matched it stare for stare. "Ianto Jones is not your concern," he repeated slowly, implacably. "Leave it. Now."

"Jack--" She couldn't just forget Ianto again, not after the way they ignored him, not after what Jack had done to him. She couldn't let Jack forget him.

He pulled away from her hand, striding away faster than she could match without running. "Leave it!" he called back over his shoulder.

***  
  
"Mind if I sit here?" Gwen asked. The café was crowded enough for it to seem a natural question.

Ianto looked up briefly from the laptop he was working on. "Go ahead." His attention was already back on the screen before she finished setting down her coffee.

He looked...good. Relaxed. Not as thin and brittle as he had been before leaving Torchwood. Seeing him now, how had she never noticed the strain he'd been under? Maybe--maybe Retcon had been the best option for him. If it didn't make him crazy like it had Max.

Ianto looked up from his screen and caught her staring at him. "Got a spot on my nose?" he asked with evident good humor. She ducked her head anyway.

"Sorry, you look like someone I know," she said. "I mean, not like you are him, but you could be his brother. Bobbie Lloyd?" Who was actually a boy from Year 6 and looked nothing like Ianto, but it was as good a conversation starter as she could think of.

"Sorry," he said, pushing his laptop to the side. "I have a cousin Bobbie, we look a bit like, but he's a Maddox." He smiled at her. "Ianto Jones."

"Gwen Cooper," she replied. He gave no sign that he remembered her, which was creepy. "You from around here, then?"

He chuckled, and that was certainly nothing she'd heard much from him in Torchwood. "What was your first clue, the Ianto or the Jones?" She laughed obligingly. "Grew up here, but I spent a couple years in London." Something shadowed his eyes for a moment, not surprising if he was missing those years. What would that be like? Did he realize that something horrible happened, or was it all just blink and he was two years older?

She gripped the stun gun she'd taken from the arsenal before she left the Hub. "Since you're local, you know a group called Torchwood?" she asked, her heart beating almost too loudly to hear her own words.

Max had gone berserk at the name; Ianto only frowned. "New band, are they? Where're they playing, then?"

She sagged with relief, released the stun gun. "Not a music group, just something I heard. I thought you might know." It wasn't the smoothest interrogation she'd ever performed, but it did the job. Torchwood meant nothing to him.

"Nope." He shrugged and nodded to the laptop. "I can Google them for you, if you'd like."

Tosh monitored searches for Torchwood and related terms. "Oh, no, that's okay. I wouldn't want to keep you from your work."

He chuckled again. "Not much to keep me from. I'm just messing about, thinking of starting a software company if I can figure out what to build."

She blinked. "You're a computer programmer?" He had to be something, Torchwood London wouldn't have hired him just for his coffee, but he'd been the invisible man, the butler, the _janitor_.

Something of her surprise must have shown, because his mouth quirked in a not entirely amused way. "Something of one, yes." He turned back to his computer with a definite air of finality.

***

Gwen was back the next day. Ianto watched her approach over the screen of his laptop while pretending not to. He might have to switch cafes, at least if he couldn't figure out what she wanted. She was persistent, her recruitment to Torchwood proved that.

She stopped at his table and he looked up, pretending to be surprised to see her. "Hi," she said, smiling at him in a friendly but not flirtatious way. At least he was pretty sure she wasn't flirting. "I thought of a program you could make if you wanted to."

He could freeze her out, but he'd never know what she wanted unless he let her talk. "Oh?" he said, keeping it friendly.

She took the seat opposite. Her coffee slopped as she set it down, but he let it lie, only pulling the cord of his laptop away from the puddle. It wasn't his job to clean up after her, after any of them, not anymore. "How about something to stop you before you send stupid email?" she suggested.

He shook his head, only a little rueful. "Google beat me to it with a drunk test. Friday and Saturday night you can tell it to make you do maths problems before you can send email."

Her eyes widened. "Really? I've got to tell Rhys's friend Banana Boat about that."

He could feel his eyebrows rise. "Banana Boat?"

Gwen laughed. "I don't know _how_ he got that name, Rhys refuses to tell me." It was her turn to shake her head. "If only we could install that program on his mobile too."

"Drunken calls in the middle of the night?" It had been--god, it had been ages since anyone called him in the middle of the night for anything but weevils or the end of the world. His friends in London were Lisa's friends, and they were all serious sorts--if they got drunk on weekends, they kept it to themselves, never losing their flat keys, running out of cab fare, or getting soppily sentimental at 3AM.

"Oh, y--" Gwen cut herself off, sinking down in her chair momentarily before straightening and glaring defiantly over Ianto's shoulder. Ianto turned, expecting just what he found.

"Oh, hi," Ianto said. "Jack...Harker. No, Harkness, right?" Jack knew his memory and wouldn't believe too much forgetfulness. He turned back to Gwen briefly. "You two know each other?" She nodded tightly, her eyes never leaving Jack. He smiled anyways. "Small world."

"Very small," Jack said without a trace of humor. He was not glaring at Gwen, just looking remarkably stone-faced, like he wanted to yell at her but couldn't with Ianto there. Ianto carefully kept the smirk off his face. Whatever Gwen was there for, it wasn't on Jack's orders.

"He your boyfriend, then?" Ianto asked, not looking at Jack. The question was in keeping with his persona and supposed ignorance, after all.

Gwen's eyes were almost comically large. "Oh, no. Rhys is my boyfriend. Jack's--Jack's my boss, I guess you'd say."

"Oh." He took a sip of his coffee, like he wasn't really interested, only making conversation with a couple of chatty strangers. "What d'you do?"

"Imports and exports," Jack said with another of his 'charming' grins. "Mostly imports." Before he could spin more of a yarn, he mobile rang. "Yeah?" he answered it. "Oh," he said after an interval. And then, "Damn." Finally, "Pack up the SUV, we'll meet you outside." He disconnected.

Gwen was already standing and Ianto found himself on his feet as well, a reflexive response after years in Torchwood. His heart pounded with adrenaline, ready to do, to fight, to _find out_. Jack looked at him with a raised eyebrow. All Ianto had to do was 'remember,' the return of memory triggered by the alert, and offer his services once again.

And then Jack would shoot him. Or imprison him until they could determine why the Retcon hadn't worked. Or lock him up in a psychiatric hospital. Or any of the other ways of dealing with holders of inconvenient memory.

Ianto offered his hand to Gwen, the perfect gentleman who always stood when a lady got up. "It sounds like you have places to be. It was nice talking to you again."

He sagged back into his chair after they were gone, staring speculatively at his laptop. How hard would it be to find out what they were after?

***

"Jack needs to hire another tea-boy," Owen grumbled. "Someone to do this shit for us." He heaved empty cans of weevil spray out of the backseat of the SUV and chucked them into the corner of the garage.

"Owen!" Tosh protested. Someone was going to have to pick up the trash, and it wasn't going to be her. Not this time. Except it probably would be. She dumped Owen's med-kit into the boot and glared at him.

Owen stopped and looked at her. "What? I'm a doctor, you're an electrical engineer, it's not like there's any reason to have us do stuff that some bloke who never took an A-level could do."

She gave a quick look around, even knowing that Jack wasn't in the Hub. "Ianto isn't--"

"Did I say Ianto?" Owen interrupted. "Did I mention Ianto? I'm just saying we need a new tea-boy--one who won't try to kill us with cyber-girlfriends in the basement. Should have recruited that Eugene Jones guy before he croaked. He was enough of a loser that he probably never had a girlfriend, cyber or otherwise." He climbed into the driver's seat, waved his fingers at her through the window. "I'm off to work, dear. Don't wait dinner."

Tosh fumed as Owen roared out of the garage. Ianto wasn't just some bloke who'd never taken an A-level; he was smart, knew computers better than Owen did. She'd been tracking his computer use since he left, and even Retconned he had a breadth of knowledge and curiosity that impressed her.

Ironically, she knew him better after he left than she ever had during his brief tenure at Torchwood. She had followed him about the Internet, reading news and journals he picked, watching him associate ideas as evident by sudden Google searches on seemingly unrelated subjects. Except that she could see the relationship between the ideas when he presented them. Watching Ianto had gone from routine chore to self-indulgence. Some days it was the nearest she came to a social outlet. Owen would have said she was pathetic.

She was pathetic, she thought as she returned to the Hub, stuck here running comms while the rest of the team investigated a crashed spaceship. She checked the SUV's location; Owen had picked up Jack and Gwen, but they were still en route to the ship. There were no further reports from the police, just chatter about 'bloody Torchwood' and the officers' annoyance at being ordered to pull back. She pulled up satellite recordings of the ship and matched it against the archive. Waltherians, apparently--mediocre ships, some advanced weapons tech, uncertain tempers. She forwarded it to the SUV, still half an hour out from the crash site. With a guilty smile she opened her file on Ianto.

This was new: zombies. Ianto was researching zombies, not the horror movie sort, but accounts of voodoo and folklore. He started with Wikipedia and followed links, switched to Google and found more academic links, followed them for a while, switched again to tabloid news and the wilder sort of blogs. He seemed to be looking for contemporary accounts, recent accounts of zombie-like behavior and schizophrenia. Checking backwards, she found the news that seemed to trigger the interest, reports of corpses missing from University Hospital. The connection between that and zombies was obvious, a doctor quoted as saying that 'unless they got up and walked out' she had no idea what happened to the corpses. Tosh chuckled and checked the SUV again.

She thumbed her headset to transmit. "You're almost at the site, guys."

"Yeah, Tosh, thanks," Owen said absently. "We can see it."

"The ship's in bad shape," Jack reported. "Looks like they lost control in atmosphere before crashing. Lots of smoke and wreckage. No signs of survivors, at least not yet. Tosh, check with UNIT about a cleanup. There's no way this baby is flying out of here."

"Will do." They didn't have the manpower or equipment to remove something the size of the ship, about equal in weight to a car ferry, but UNIT did. She pulled up the contact list and made the call, getting assurances from the colonel on duty that they'd have a team there in an hour.

"Jack!" Owen's voice came over the comms. "Got something here, looks like it was ejected before the crash. Few scorch marks, but basically intact."

"Don't touch it before I get there," Jack called back. "Gwen, anything?"

"More wreckage, nothing else," Gwen answered.

"Okay, go check with the police, make sure they haven't seen anything," Jack said. "See if you can plant the idea that it's an experimental aircraft. Can't blame the Soviets anymore, so try North Korea."

Tosh spoke up. "Jack, I'm inserting news reports into the AP wire feed going back a few weeks: rumors from 'unnamed sources,' denials from various officials, the usual." All of it was vague and low-key enough that no one would wonder why they hadn't noticed it when it first came out, but they wouldn't think it came out of the blue--or the Rift--either.

"Good. Thanks, Tosh." There was a long pause and then Jack's voice continued. "Well, well, what have we here?" She wished she could see what he and Owen were looking at.

"Jack?"

"Looks like a bod-pod," Jack said. "Suspended animation lifeboat, basically. Not Waltherian technology, they must have scavenged it somewhere." How Jack knew these things was something Tosh had learned not to ask. "I wonder if--" His voice was cut off by an explosion.

"Jack!" Gwen screamed.

***

"Crap." Owen pulled himself up off the ground, dislodging flying debris that had landed on his back. Inventorying his body parts, he found everything present and working, nothing worse than a few scratches. Jack hadn't been so lucky. A jagged piece of metal was stuck in his neck, severing the carotid artery from the angle and the amount of blood. Owen found his headset, knocked to the ground, and put it on.

"Jack? Owen? Answer me!" Tosh was saying.

"I'm all right, Tosh," Owen said. He looked down at Jack's corpse. "Jack is unconscious, but he should be okay. Give us a few." If Jack could manage to come back before Gwen got there--but no, here she was. Owen knelt at Jack's side, trying to block her sight. "Gwen, get the medical kit from the SUV," he ordered.

Gwen ignored him and knelt beside him. Switching off her headset, she said quietly, "He's dead, even I can see that." She gave him a sideways look. "You know, don't you?"

So Gwen knew too. Who'd have thought. He switched off his headset as well. "I am a doctor, even if I'm not _his_ doctor. 'Course I know." He looked over his shoulder at the surrounding cordon of police. "Let's get him into the SUV to recover before anyone needs a bigger dose of Retcon."

"Right."

Getting Jack into the SUV without being too obvious about the corpse-moving was harder than he expected, but they got him into the backseat with the doors shut before a police constable came to join them.

"There's a new lot at the cordon," she said. "Said you lot called them in. That right?"

"Should be, yeah," Owen said, rubbing at a stitch in his side. Who knew Jack would be so bloody heavy? "They give a name?"

"Colonel Warwick, he said," the police constable said. "Didn't say colonel of what," she added sourly.

Gwen thumbed on her comm. "Tosh, you have a contact name for--" She looked at the WPC, "--our friends?" She listened for a moment, nodded. "Thanks." She looked over at the WPC. "You can let them in, thanks. Can you send Colonel Warwick over our way?"

"Sure. It's not like I have anything better to do with my day." The WPC stalked off.

Gwen started back towards the wreckage and Owen followed. Jack's bod-pod was nothing but a pile of twisted metal, obviously the source of the explosion. They were still looking down at it, leery of touching anything, when Colonel Warwick came up.

"You Harkness?" he asked Owen, ignoring Gwen. Warwick was a big man, rather too red in the face to wear a red beret well, but the sort who obviously thought he should be cast to play the gruff but charismatic commander in a war film.

"Nope," Owen said casually. "He got caught up in the explosion here, got his brains shaken about a bit. He's back at the SUV." He nodded at Gwen, just to keep the man off balance. "She's in charge." Gwen gave him an appalled look, probably quick enough that Warwick didn't see it. "I'm just the doctor." Gwen could deal with this blighter until Jack returned from the land of nod or wherever he went when he was dead.

Gwen held out a hand. "Gwen Cooper." She nodded at Owen. "Owen Harper."

"Pleased to meet you, ma'am," Warwick said, sounding anything but pleased. "I hear you need this hunk of junk moved out of here."

Jack was 'awake' again, sitting up and looking out the windows of the SUV. Owen edged out of the conversation, leaving the two of them to deal with the spaceship while he went and pretended to be a doctor for a man who needed none. If nothing else, Jack needed to be given a heads up on the story he told Warwick.

Jack was still sitting in the SUV when Owen got there, doors still shut, which was...odd. Owen had only seen a couple of Jack's deaths, but he was usually up and about immediately after reviving. Maybe blood loss slowed him down?

"How you feeling, Jack? Back in the land of the living?" he asked as he opened the back door of the SUV. The wound at Jack's neck had healed without a scar, leaving no more sign of his injury than his blood-soaked shirt. His coat by some miracle was clean. Jack just looked at him, his expression blank, before trying to push past him to get out. Owen held up a hand, blocking him. "Jack?" Jack kept trying to get out and Owen pushed back harder. Jack fell backwards onto the seat without any sign of annoyance, anger, or anything else. His face held no more expression than it had when he was dead. He sat up and tried to get out of the SUV again.

"Shit." Colonel Warwick and his UNIT chums didn't need to be seeing this, any more than the police did. Owen pushed Jack back inside and climbed in after him, pulling the door shut behind him. With the door shut Jack stopped trying to go through Owen, but continued to look at him with the same blank lack of curiosity that he'd been looking out the windows with before.

"Jack. You're freaking me out now," Owen said. If Jack understood a word of it he gave no sign. "If this is a joke I'm going to kill you, you know. Slowly." Owen waved a hand in front of Jack's face and Jack followed the motion, but mechanically, with no real interest. "Shit, shit, shit." He thumbed his comm on. "Gwen, finish things up with your little playmate, we need to get Jack back to the Hub."

***

Ianto swallowed, looking at the closed door of the tourist office. The first time he had stood here he'd been holding a cup of coffee and trying to convince Jack to give him a job. The last time he had stood here Lisa had been alive and Ianto had been the loyal Torchwood worker bee, at least as far as anyone knew. If he did this there was no going back. His codes would open no doors, not anymore, but the attempt would raise alarms below. Jack would come and--and he could only hope that Jack would give him time to explain, to warn.

He touched the code pad by the door and entered his code before he could change his mind. The electronic lock gave an audible click. He hesitated only a moment before pushing the door open. "Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly," he said aloud, wondering if Jack was listening, if he was watching the CCTV. He wasn't really surprised when a touch to the button behind the desk opened the hidden door. If Jack wanted to save himself some steps and make Ianto come to him, it would all be the same in the end.

The long walk to the inner door was familiar, even comforting, though he could have wished for a suit as armor against the chill. The jacket that was warm enough outside seemed thin and insubstantial underground.

He expected Jack to be waiting for him as the cog door rolled open, but the Hub was deserted. Or no, there was a light in the conference room. He moved out into the center of the Hub and looked up at the conference room, waiting. Gwen saw him first, and then Tosh and Owen joined her at the window, looking down at his with identical looks of shock. Jack must not have warned them. Typical.

Gwen was first out the door. "Ianto! What are you doing here?"

"I need to talk to Jack," he said, his voice rough even in his own ears.

"Jack is busy," Owen said, his arms folded over his chest. "Why don't you tell us and we'll tell him when he has time?"

"It's urgent," Ianto said. "Cardiff is in danger." Anything less and he wouldn't be here.

"Uh-huh." Owen was nothing if not skeptical.

Ianto could see someone moving still in the conference room. "Jack!" he called, hoping Jack would hear him through the open door, hoping he would pay attention. "You have to listen to me!" That brought Jack to the door, but he wasn't looking at Ianto. His gaze passed over the rest of Torchwood and Ianto as if he hadn't seen them and settled on the metal railing for an inordinate amount of time before turning to the glass wall beside him. Ianto looked at Jack's blank stare and felt his stomach drop. "He died, didn't he?" Gwen started to say something, probably a denial. "He can't die, I know that," he said impatiently. It was all the gossip in London. "He dies and comes back to life. Only this time he's been like this since." She nodded.

"Did everyone know about Jack except me?" Tosh complained.

"Looks like, love," Owen said.

Ianto ignored the byplay. "You need to get Jack into a containment cell. Now."

Owen's arms were still folded across his chest. "And why should we, Retcon-boy?"

Ianto glared back. Owen would be stubborn just for the sake of being stubborn. "Aliens--Ijada if that means anything to you--are taking over corpses in Cardiff to use as mobile extensions. "

"And Jack was a corpse," Gwen said. Ianto nodded.

"That's why you were researching zombies," Tosh said with a look of sudden enlightenment. He should have realized she'd be the one reviewing his computer usage.

"And you know this because--?" Owen tilted his head to the side.

"Because this isn't the first time. Or the first place. Because I worked for two bloody years in London before coming back to this--" He stopped, knowing he couldn't afford to antagonize them. "They showed up in London two years ago. My first big investigation. We figured out that they were using the bodies as--they were activating recently dead corpses to explore the city, like remote-control spybots. We located their ship and destroyed it and all the bodies were bodies again."

"Is that what triggered your memory?" Gwen asked.

"Something like that," he said, hoping that would be enough explanation. Jack--or Jack's body--was coming down the stairs now, his movements slow and uncertain. Ianto gave Owen a bright smile. "Jack. Containment unit. Yes?"

"Er, right," Owen said. He put a hand on Jack's shoulder. "Come on, mate. Down to the cells with you." Jack looked at Owen's hand and just kept walking. Owen grabbed him again and tried to swing him around, entirely unsuccessfully.

"Did I mention that they're stronger than the original person?" Ianto asked. He tried to suppress his smirk; from Owen's expression, he failed.

"Right," Owen snarled. "Tosh, look up the Ijada, see what else Ianto is forgetting to tell us. Gwen, check with local hospitals, see how many missing corpses we have. You--" He glared at Ianto. "Help me get Jack down to the cells."

"Stun guns work," Ianto suggested. "Just not for very long."

***

Ianto slipped into his usual seat--his old seat--as he and Owen came into the conference room. Tosh took a sip of her coffee and tried not to grimace. Asking Ianto to make coffee would probably be pushing it, but Owen's coffee, while not bad, but nowhere near as good as Ianto's had been.

"I have the report from London," she said when everyone settled. "The Ijada appeared in early August two years ago, though they may have been operating for a few days before they were first noticed. The first reports were area hospitals missing bodies, same as here. They took over a hundred bodies before their ship was destroyed, all apparently within four hours of their original deaths. Unlike traditional zombies, the bodies breathed and had pulses, just no brainwave activity."

" _Braaiins_ ," Owen moaned. Ianto snorted.

"As far as the reports go, no one--no one living--was hurt by the, um, bodies," Tosh continued. "As a zombie invasion it was remarkably peaceful." Until Torchwood London blew up their ship, of course.

"One bloke crashed his car trying to avoid one when it stepped out into the street," Ianto said, "But that wasn't an attack." He had a thoughtful look on his face.

"Precisely," Tosh said. "Even Jack hasn't tried to hurt anyone." London's policy was not Cardiff's policy, Jack kept telling them.

"Yet," Owen corrected. "How long were they around last time? Maybe they just didn't have time for their plan to come together."

"Less than a day," Ianto said. "When you have a hundred dead bodies roaming around London you don't exactly take your time dealing with it." He looked a little uncomfortable, maybe even guilty.

"Understandable," Tosh said. Even in London a bunch of people with Jack's blank stare would be noticed, at least in some quarters. "It's just--Jack had a note on the file: _Idiots. Both lots._ "

"Even if they're peaceful, we can't have dead people running around Cardiff," Gwen said. "Their families--" She grimaced.

"If they're controlling 'em from their ship, can we block 'em?" Owen asked.

"It wasn't an implant or anything that would keep working if communication was lost," Ianto said. "But we never isolated a signal."

"We've got Jack and the equipment of the Hub," Tosh said. "How hard can it be?"

***

Ianto straightened up after too many hours hunched over the sensors and took a gulp from his mug, trying not to taste it. The coffee was crap, but he wasn't going to make another batch, damn it. He wasn't Torchwood's butler anymore. "So it's definitely not electromagnetic," he said.

"I wouldn't say definitely," Tosh said cautiously, though he thought her caution was more habitual than any real doubt. "But yeah. Makes sense, electromagnetic wouldn't penetrate this far underground. Even mobile signals can't get through."

"So that leaves what?" Owen asked.

"Psychics, tachyon, gravitronic...?" Ianto offered.

"It has to be something that the human brain--nervous system--can receive and recognize without a separate receiver," Tosh stated. She looked at Owen. "You never saw anyone or anything tampering with Jack's body, right?"

"Right," Owen said. "But--" He stopped when Gwen appeared.

"UNIT has spotted the Ijada ship--or what we think is their ship," Gwen said. "They wants to know whether we're dealing with it or if they should." She had taken over communication with UNIT and the outside world.

"They have the weapons to shoot it down," Owen said. "Bit of a brute-force solution, but it worked last time." He looked down at Jack's body--they had all been careful to call it his body, not Jack, especially when it moved--with an indecipherable expression.

Ianto opened his mouth to protest but Tosh beat him to it. "No," she said. He closed his mouth; his contribution would only make Owen more stubborn, suspicious of Ianto's motives. "Jack had a reason to think it a bad idea last time."

Owen looked almost relieved. "So we tell them thanks but we're on it?" Tosh and Gwen exchanged a glance and nodded. Ianto nodded too. If they had shot down a ship unnecessarily last time that was bad enough without repeating it.

"They're not going to wait very long unless we can show them we know how to deal with this," Tosh said.

"Jack--could convince them to wait," Ianto said. He didn't like Jack--he had every reason to hate Jack--but he had a commanding manner when he wanted it.

Owen snorted. "If we had Jack back it'd mean the problem was sorted, now, wouldn't it?"

"Maybe--" Gwen stopped, raised her hand to her headset. "Shit," she said after a moment. "The police have found the first mobile body," she reported. "Or I think so. There are reports of a disoriented female walking in traffic near the university."

"Could just be one of our local bag-ladies," Owen muttered. Gwen glared at him.

"They haven't connected it to the missing bodies, but if they take her in and run fingerprints they might," she continued.

"We should go get this one," Tosh said. "Another example, maybe one more typical than Jack--" She shrugged. Ianto nodded; it would do them no good to find something that worked on Jack only because of his immortality. Or worse yet, not find something that would work on everyone except Jack.

"Right," Owen said. "Tosh, Ianto, keep looking for--for anything you can find. Gwen, you're with me, lucky girl." He grinned at her expression, held up his hands in mock-injured innocence. "Since you're our liaison with the police and all, that's all I meant." Gwen gave him a hard look before heading off towards the SUV, a grinning Owen following behind.

Ianto looked after them. "Are those two--never mind." The attraction between the two had been obvious before he...left...masked behind their eternal bickering. From the looks of things nothing had changed. Tosh was looking wistfully after Owen, so nothing had changed there either. He took another gulp of coffee. How the hell did they manage to make it weak and bitter at the same time? "Oh, screw it," he said. He raised a brow at Tosh. "Coffee?"

Her eyes widened. "Yes, _please_." She followed him to the coffee machine and watched with eager eyes, verging on lust, as he dusted off the espresso machine, obviously supplanted since he left by a grubby Mr. Coffee maker.

He chuckled. "If I thought it was my body you wanted instead of my coffee I'd be flattered." God knew that she deserved better than Owen.

Tosh ducked her head, blushed. "Sorry. I mean--"

"Joke, Tosh." They didn't really know each other, did they? He hadn't meant to make her uncomfortable, and now she was not looking at him in an obvious way. "Can you give me temporary access to the network?" he asked hesitantly. It was a lot to ask. "I want to see if I can find anything more about the Ijada in the archives." She opened her mouth and he continued quickly. "I mean, you know the system best, but--" But she was an electrical engineer, a hardware and software geek, not an information specialist. "But I have some ideas," he finished lamely.

"Oh. Oh, yes. Of course," she said, probably more eager to get away from the awkwardness than anything else. "I'll just go and--" She waved a hand towards her workstation before scurrying off.

He finished the coffees and carried both cups to her workstation. Tosh was frowning at her monitor, but took her coffee with an absent thanks.

"Your login is active and you have all your old permissions," she said, still frowning at the computer until she took a sip of her coffee and smiled blissfully.

All his old permissions? That was much more than he'd expected, more than she should have given him, really. "Thank you."

She looked over her shoulder at him. "No, I mean they were already there. Still there. Jack--never deleted them."

"He must have forgotten," Ianto said. Except someone that careless wouldn't last long in the world they lived in.

Tosh frowned, obviously not convinced. "You can use Suzie's old workstation," she said. He nodded and headed over to it.

He was knee-deep in UNIT's files when Gwen and Owen returned with their new 'body' in tow, helpfully strapped to a gurney. She--it--was already struggling, but the straps were rated for weevils and no human muscle, however over-clocked, could budge them. He let Owen and Gwen wrestle the gurney down the stairs into the autopsy bay while he turned back to the screen. Searching on 'mind control' without 'electromagnetic' had turned up a couple of dozen incidents, but most of the aliens involved were familiar and not useful. He opened the file on one he didn't recognize, an attempted invasion/subversion in Yorkshire in 1977. A crash and a clatter distracted him for an instant, but no one was screaming so it couldn't have been important.

"Oi! Ianto!" Owen called a moment later. "You going to come help with this or what?"

"No?" Ianto called back without looking. The Doctor called the aliens Sirens, said no human could pronounce their real name. The Doctor's involvement was no surprise, he'd been hanging around under UNIT's protection most of that decade. Torchwood analysts had been arguing ever since about whether he attracted more alien invasions than he prevented. This one he'd found the solution to, though, something to do with his ubiquitous sonic screwdriver.

Sirens. _Sonic_ screwdriver. Yes--

"Ianto!" That was almost a scream, from Gwen instead of Owen. He turned from the computer and found the other three struggling to hold the gurney before it slipped off the stairs and fell to the floor ten feet below. He ran over, sliding under the chain that served as a railing and dropping to the floor to grab the gurney from below. With four of them they got it down without dropping the Ijada-possessed body on its head.

"Thanks ever so, mate," Owen growled. "Had time to finish your game of solitaire, I hope?"

Ianto gave him a closed-mouth smile. "Yep. I reckon I won, too." He shoved the electromagnetic sensors out of the way, pulled in a new set of machinery. Tosh watched for a second before diving in to help.

"Sound waves?" she asked, kneeling to attach sensors to the concrete floor. "It makes sense, the vibration would travel through the ground--"

"Air, water, ground," Ianto agreed. "If the vibrations affect newly-dead cells--"

"But--that's not possible, is it?" Gwen said. "I mean, how would that make them breathe and their hearts beat--?"

"It shouldn't be possible," Owen said, his tone more thoughtfully than the words. "None of this shit should be."

"But it is," Ianto finished for him. "Bunch of aliens in 1977--not Ijada--were controlling villagers in Yorkshire, possibly using sound waves --"

"Here it is!" Tosh said, her voice nearly squeaking in excitement. "See? Here and here--" She pointed to the display, where a regular wave something like a sinus rhythm was crawling across the screen. "Jack's heart is beating in time with this wave."

"Huh." Owen studied the display, comparing it to the read-outs of Jack's body's vital signs, and then hooked the new body up to similar monitoring. Every heartbeat, every breath, even the electrical activity in the brainstem were the same between Jack's body and the new one. Tosh tuned the sensors, matching each bodily function to the frequency that controlled it. They all studied the display in silence.

"Right," Owen said at last. "So how do we stop it? Stuff cotton wool in their ears?"

"Ulysses used wax," Ianto offered. The Doctor had blathered on about the Greek legends of the sirens, after all. "But I don't think that'll work any better."

"Sound-proof room?" Gwen suggested more seriously.

"I don't think we could block all vibration," Ianto said. "Too many frequencies involved."

"I, um--" Tosh started before falling silent. They all turned to look at her and she flushed. "I--in my first week at Torchwood Jack had me build a sonic modulator," she said, finishing all in a rush. "I don't know where it is now--"

"Secure archive," Ianto said automatically; he'd seen it while retrieving a cyber-component that he'd hoped would help Lisa. Tosh gave him a panicked look and he nodded reluctantly. He knew why she didn't want to talk about the sonic modulator, yes. Owen and Gwen still looked mystified.

"But we could use it to disrupt the signal," Tosh finished. She hesitated. "I think."

"Can we get into the secure archives?" Owen asked. "Without zombie-man here?" he added, nodding towards Jack's body.

Ianto was already halfway up the stairs. "Unless Jack changed the password, yes," he called back.

Jack hadn’t changed the password, another piece of his mystifying behavior, though Ianto was pretty certain that he didn't know Ianto knew it. He found the sonic modulator and dropped it into Tosh's waiting hands from the railing.

***

Owen scowled as Ianto clattered down the stairs back into the autopsy bay. How the hell had the tea-boy-- _ex_ -tea-boy--learned so much about Torchwood? And was he, Owen, supposed to be doing something about a disgraced former employee running around the Hub like he owned it?

The device in Tosh's hands let out an unearthly squall, instant headache time. "Christ, Tosh!" he yelled.

She silenced it. "Sorry." She fiddled with it and turned it on again, producing a low thrum that only made Owen's teeth hurt. She tuned it, keeping one eye on the sound sensor display and the other on the device's controls. The monitors on Jack and--on Jack's body and the other body--beeped as their hearts skipped a beat. Tosh stopped, studying the monitors, and then made a final adjustment.

Owen clenched his fists, driving his fingernails into his palms, as the monitor on the woman's body flat-lined, a steady squeal from the machine indicating its distress. This was what they wanted; the woman was already dead, had been for half a day. Even if he could get her heart beating again, she was gone.

Ianto reached over and turned the machine off, silencing the noise. "We don't need this anymore," he said, almost managing a casual tone of voice. He stared down at the body without expression. The last dead body Ianto had seen had been his girlfriend, Owen realized. There didn't seem to be anything to say.

Owen forced himself to turn from the dead woman to Jack, whose monitor showed only a momentary irregularity in heartbeat and breathing before it had settled into a new and different rhythm. He was alive. Maybe. "Brainwaves are still flat," Owen said, looking at the EEG.

"Unconscious?" Gwen asked hopefully.

"Brain dead. No higher cerebral functions, minimal brainstem activity," Owen said, his voice grating on his own ears. He laughed, "The lights are on but nobody's home; the elevator doesn't go to the top floor." He shoved his clenched fists into his pockets. "Damn it, Tosh, you must have missed something!"

"I didn't!" she said. She stabbed a finger at the display still displaying the conflicting sound waves. "See? His heart's not beating in time to any of the waves anymore, his breathing is slower, nothing's the same!"

"Except he's still _dead_ ," Owen said. Jack wasn't supposed to be dead. He was the constant, the one damn thing that never changed.

Gwen spoke before Tosh could annoy him with more of her babbling. "Maybe--maybe whatever keeps him alive doesn't know the Ijada are gone yet."

"So what, we yell in his ear? Oi, mate, you're alive again!" Owen said, suiting actions to words. Jack stayed as dead as before.

Tosh started giggling, more than slightly hysterically. "Dogbert's tech support," she gasped out.

Ianto's eyebrow rose. Apparently whatever geek reference she was making wasn't lost on him. "Shut up and reboot?" he asked.

Jack's death had let the Ijada into his body, his corpse. Killing him again--god, it might even work. "Right," Owen said, pulling his sidearm. If anyone was going to shoot Jack it was going to be him. The girls shouldn't have to and Ianto had no right. "Not exactly what I went to medical school for, was it?"

***

Watching Owen shoot Jack wasn't as satisfying as it ought to have been. Ianto winced at the blood, at the sound echoing off the concrete walls and floor, at the waxy gray pallor of Jack's face.

Ianto faded backwards, fetched up on the stairs and sat on the third one up. He could leave, the others would never notice his absence. They might not even tell Jack that he'd been here. He came back for Cardiff, for humanity, and even if the Ijada turned out to be something less than the zombie apocalypse he couldn't find it in himself to regret it. But he didn't owe Jack anything, certainly not his death or imprisonment.

Jack--Jack saw Lisa as no different from the woman whose body was still lying on the other gurney: dead already, forced into a parody of life by an alien in possession of her body. Jack had never known Lisa, had never talked to her before Dr. Tanizaki changed her. And--and even Ianto had to admit that the thing that killed Annie and transferred Lisa's brain into her body was--not his Lisa.

Jack gasped, a great whooping inrush of air like a drowning man surfacing from the sea. Owen, Gwen, and Tosh clustered about him, drawing in until Ianto couldn't see him. "Crap," Jack said. Ianto snorted. "Remind me to stay away from Ceti decoy mines."

"Decoy mines?" Tosh asked immediately. Maybe she'd learned that the only way to get information out of Jack was to ask while he was distracted. Ianto had used the technique a time or two.

"Nasty war, about seven hundred years from now," Jack said easily, a little too easily to be perfectly truthful. "The Ceti--the losing side, eventually--created mines to look like survival pods, in the hope that their enemies would pick them up and be destroyed when the mine went off. Worked, too. For a while." He chuckled and Ianto knew he was going to start spinning a line of bullshit to distract the others from his death. "I once knew--" He stopped abruptly, probably realizing he was no longer wherever he'd died. "How long was I dead?" he asked at last.

Owen snorted. "Either three minutes or--" He looked at his watch with a flourish. "--twelve hours and thirty-five minutes, depending on how you count it."

Gwen was helping Jack sit up, his head now visible over hers and Tosh's. Jack was turned to face Owen, however, and hadn't seen Ianto. "Would you care to explain that, Owen?" His voice was neutral. He either knew that Owen knew about his immortality or he was doing a good job of acting. But Jack was nothing if not a good actor.

Gwen and Owen tumbled over each other to explain. Tosh cut through them both. "Ijada," she said. The single word appeared to explain enough for Jack; his face flickered through surprise, dismay, and chagrin, before settling on a one-sided grin.

"Well." Jack stood, turning towards the stair where Ianto was sitting, and then stopped. "Well," he repeated. Ianto got up; he would face his fate on his feet, thank you very much. Jack's lips pressed together and then he shook his head. "Ianto. " It was neither greeting nor accusation. He strode forward and Ianto scrambled to get out of his way. "Holiday over? " he asked cheerfully as he passed. "Work to do."

Jack stopped at the top of the stairs, leaning over the railing. "Tosh, crank up your translation program, see about feeding it Mid-High Galactic or the closest variant you have. Ianto, archive 7-beta, shelf 86-92-alpha. Gwen, pull up plans for the Hub. We need a spot with power that is solid bedrock underneath, no lower levels. Owen, help Gwen clear the spot when she finds one."

"And what will you be doing?" Gwen challenged.

Jack smirked. "Changing my shirt and figuring out the best way to give a bunch of idiot tourists a right ticking off."

***

Shelf 86-92-alpha contained a single device, light enough to carry without a dolly but large enough to be awkward. The awkwardness made it easier for Ianto to ignore the corridor leading off to the left on the level above that led to the chamber where Lisa had lived--or something had lived--and died months before. No, she was Lisa, Lisa had lived there. What had died there, that was the question. He started up the stairs, not even swearing under his breath when he mashed his hand between the device and the stair railing. The device was big and awkward and that was all that he was thinking about.

He paused at the turning. Who was he kidding? He set the device down and stared into the corridor, no different from any of a hundred corridors just like it in the Hub. The room at the end of it was empty, scoured clean, Jack had seen to that--had shown Ianto that--before he left. The converter frame, the cyber-components, all had been incinerated. What was left of Lisa and her vic--and the _other_ victims was stored in cryo-chambers. There was nothing left. Nothing.

"Need some help with that?" Jack's voice and his hand landing on Ianto's shoulder made Ianto jump. "Kind of bulky, I should have warned you."

Even Jack couldn't have forgotten what was down that corridor. But if he wanted to pretend he hadn't come down to check up on Ianto, so be it. "I doubt two people on a stair would be any less awkward," Ianto said drily. Especially if he and Jack were the two, he didn't add. He picked the device up again and started up the next flight of stairs. "It's not heavy."

"No shame in asking for a little help," Jack said, following much too closely behind. He could have been talking about the box, he could have been talking about...more.

Ianto stopped, closed his eyes. The idea of talking to Jack about Lisa was obscene. "I don't need your help. Sir." He managed to keep his voice even, calm.

"Then I'll just follow behind and admire your...carrying capacity."

***

Gwen straightened up from clearing the last box of unidentified _things_ from behind Suzie's old workbench. Ianto had once been in charge of making such piles disappear into the archives where he would...file them or something. Sort them. Maybe even identify them. Since he had left they piled up, bred in corners until they threatened to fall over on someone.

"You could help, you know," she snapped at Owen, who seemed to view his role as more decorative than functional.

"When you're doing such a bang up job?" Owen smirked. He came over and for a bare instant she thought he would take the box. Instead he removed a small device from the top of the pile. "Was looking for this last week. Never know where anything is around this dump anymore."

She wasn't the only one who noticed. "Since Ianto left." If she could get Owen's support for Ianto, they might be able to convince Jack not to Retcon Ianto again. Retcon or worse.

Owen snorted. "He had his uses. Pity about the whole trying to destroy the world thing, but nobody's perfect, right, love?"

She bit back her first retort. "He wasn't trying to destroy the world," she said evenly. "He loved that woman. Lisa. He loved Lisa and was only trying to save her."

"And almost started World War Last in the process," Owen retorted. "You never saw what the Cybermen did to Torchwood London. Blood everywhere, people turned into cybernetic killing machines, brains ripped out of their bodies--" He sounded almost gleeful at the description of the carnage. She remembered the knives coming down from the conversion unit and shuddered.

"He _loved_ her," she repeated, trying to banish the images. If Rhys had been caught in one of those machines she would have fought as hard as Ianto. "If the woman you loved--"

Owen looked at her for a long moment and then smirked again. "You know me, love. Much too sensible for all that love jazz." He shook his head. "Never the same bird twice, that's my motto."

***

Jack stayed out of Ianto's way as he and Tosh connected the device from the archives to Tosh's translator, but Ianto was still conscious of the weight of Jack's eyes on him. Jack--Jack had his own reasons, no doubt, but Ianto was still grateful to be allowed to see the Ijada incident play out before he was...dealt with...in whatever manner Jack saw fit.

"Damn," Tosh swore. "We need a coax to 9-pin adaptor. Could you--"

Ianto smiled as he pulled the connector from his pocket, because some habits were hard to break--including checking for obvious auxiliary parts when fetching equipment.

Tosh smiled back. "Of course." She took the connector and plugged it in with a flourish. "All done!"

Jack strode down, thumbs tucked in his braces. "Good work, you two." He raised his voice. "Gwen, get UNIT on the line and check that they're still monitoring the ship. I want to know when it moves off. I hate talking to myself."

He thumbed the microphone on and then stood with his hands clasped behind his back. "Attention Ijada ship! I am the Harkness of Torchwood. You are in violation of Earth hygiene and sanitation codes regarding use and disposal of biological tissue and samples. We are willing to waive all fines and sanctions providing you leave all tissue and samples in their current locations and remove your ship and selves from this solar system immediately." He thumbed the microphone off and looked at Gwen. "Well?"

She boggled at him--Ianto knew he was doing the same--before thumbing on her headset. "Any change?" she asked, obviously not sure whether she should expect anything. She listened for a moment. "Thank you. Let me know if--yes, right. We'll send you a copy of the report once it's completed." She thumbed her headset off. "It's leaving," she said unnecessarily. Jack smirked.

"Hygiene and sanitation?" Owen demanded. "You mean we only needed to threaten them with the Ministry of Health?"

Jack's smirk grew. "Yup. They're only tourists, thrill seekers by Ijada standards. They aren't even in that ship up there, it's just a relay station. They never leave their home planet."

Ianto collapsed into Tosh's chair, started laughing. He came back, he gave up his life and his freedom, to save Cardiff and Earth from armchair explorers watching a David Attenborough special. Tosh caught his eye, hid her laugh behind her hand. Gwen chuckled.

"Bloody hell," Owen said, apparently addressing the ceiling. He looked down, glared at Jack like it was his fault. "It's three in the effing morning, too late even to get a drink."

"Don't worry, you can go on the pull tomorrow," Jack said consolingly. "Go home, everyone. Get some sleep, come in tomorrow afternoon."

"Shit, Rhys is going to go spare," Gwen said, looking at her watch. She grabbed her coat.

Ianto stayed seated. Everyone didn't mean him, of course.

Owen and Tosh left with a "Ta" and "Good night," respectively, but Gwen stopped at the cog door, looked back.

"Jack--"

"Gwen." Jack's voice was definite and commanding. "Go home. Give Rhys a kiss and get some sleep."

Of course Gwen didn't take commands well, she never did. She was looking right at Ianto. "Jack--" Ianto dropped his elbows to his knees, stared at the floor. He didn't want to listen to them argue over his fate. It was too much like being ten again.

Jack must have said or done something, because the next thing he heard was Gwen saying, "All right, then." Reasonably cheerfully, so even Gwen's vaunted compassion couldn't stretch far enough to cover what Ianto had done. "Good night."

"Good night," Jack replied. Ianto didn't bother. "Ianto. My office."

***

Jack watched Ianto drop heavily into the chair opposite his desk and wondered if he was tired enough to tell Jack the truth. Whisky might have helped, but there was no way Ianto would accept beverages from Jack, not now.

"So." Jack leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head and his feet up on the desk. "Ready to come back yet?"

Ianto's head came up. "What?"

Jack swallowed a laugh. "I had a bet with myself that you were going to say something this morning, but you disappointed me. Still, this probably worked out better."

"Better." It wasn't a question; his inflection was perfectly flat.

Jack shouldn't be enjoying this, but life was too long not to have fun. "Tell me, Ianto. Why did you come back?"

Ianto snorted, echoes of his earlier laughter. "Cardiff was--I thought Cardiff was in danger. From armchair adventurers." The last three words were full of bitterness.

"And you came racing back to lay the problem at my feet. Why? Couldn't find another pterodactyl?" Jack pursed his lips, mocking disappointment. "Pity, really. Myfanwy could use the company."

Ianto was glaring at him now. "You--think I wanted to come back?"

It was time to stop indulging Ianto. "Didn't you?" he demanded. _Don't you?_ he wanted to ask. "Or were you going to spend the rest of your life hanging out in cafes, drinking coffee and pretending to work?"

"I didn't engineer this!" Which was as much confirmation as Jack was ever likely to get that Ianto _had_ arranged the pterodactyl.

"Not this time, no." Jack shook his head. "Ianto--" He sighed theatrically. "I let you go thinking you might create a new life, a life outside of Torchwood." Which was a lie, since he'd been pretty certain Ianto would be back. "But you didn't. You were bored and drifting and just waiting for an excuse to come back. So now you're back. You can leave again if you want to, but if you do there's no coming back, not even for the end of the world." That wasn't entirely true, but he needed to push Ianto into making a decision.

"I can leave. And be Retconned again." It would be so easy for Ianto if it weren't his choice, if Jack forced him to come back. Too easy.

Jack chuckled. "If you want to be. I can even give you the good stuff, something that will work on your genotype." Ianto started at that. "I gave Torchwood the formula for Retcon. I bet that's something Yvonne never told you." Ianto shook his head, looking dazed. "Stopped them from killing so many people. But I didn't give them everything." It would have been far, far too easy for Alice or Yvonne or any of the lovely sociopathic ladies between those two to use it on him, after all. He cocked his head at Ianto. "So tell me, did you know before you took it that it wouldn't work? Or were you trying to commit virtual suicide?"

"I knew." Ianto's voice was hoarse, raw truth at last. "I--a year and a half ago. There was--I was supposed to forget, but I didn't. I looked it up afterwards, found that Retcon doesn't work on some people, though no one knew why. I never told them that I remembered."

Even before Canary Wharf was destroyed he hadn't trusted everyone. Good boy. He wasn't self-destructive, either; he wouldn't go running into danger, getting someone else killed in his pursuit of penance. "If you come back there'll be conditions."

"Figured," Ianto muttered, quietly enough that Jack might not have been supposed to hear. Yet he looked more reassured than not. Mr. Jones liked knowing the price upfront, it appeared.

"If you come back I want all of you." Jack ignored Ianto's faintly alarmed look. "Everything, body and brains. If you know how to do something that needs doing, you say so. If you don't, you damn well figure it out. No more coasting on suits and coffee."

Ianto snorted. "Butler was never the top of my career goals." Fully trained researcher, right.

"You played me once and I admire that," Jack admitted. "Not many people manage to con an old conman. You tried to play me again with the Retcon and I let you." Ianto opened his mouth but Jack glared him down. "I. Let. You." Ianto shut his mouth. "Try it again and I won't bother with Retcon." He laid his Webley on the desk. "Clear?"

"Crystal, sir." The threat didn't seem to faze him.

"Ooh, love the way you say sir!" Jack said with his biggest, cheesiest grin. Annoying Ianto was almost as much fun as flirting with him.

Ianto was not amused. "If I come back I'm not taking any shit from anyone. Not from you, not from Owen."

"You'll take orders from me," Jack countered. "My good little soldier. Anything else, any _one_ else, that's up to you."

Ianto gave him a long, level look. "Deal," he said at last.


End file.
